The story of Arthur Russell's life is easy to mythologize. A Midwestern farm boy runs away from home to the hazy streets of San Francisco, befriends Allen Ginsberg, and is locked in a closet by a half-assed charlatan who at least has the wit to recognize Russell's talent as a cellist. Then suddenly Russell relocates to Manhattan where he shares a street address with the likes of Ginsberg and Richard Hell. Without skipping a beat Russell befriends and collaborates with The Modern Lovers' Ernie Brooks; Philip Glass; David Byrne; Robert Wilson; and other luminaries of the New York City avant-garde and, more importantly, of the burgeoning disco scene.

Almost overnight Russell is producing groundbreaking experimental disco tracks under a host of aliases, all while continuing to explore his primary interests: his cello and his voice. Despite his quest for popularity, Russell descends into self-doubting paranoia which leaves him at home endlessly recording and re-recording songs dedicated to this lover, Tom Lee, before eventually falling prey to AIDS in 1992.

Much like the rest of us, experimental film director Matt Wolf became familiar with Russell's work through the compilations that have surfaced over the past few years, such as Soul Jazz Records' The World of Arthur Russell and Calling Out of Context on Audika. Thankfully Russell left behind thousands of reel-to-reel tapes and cassettes, which Tom Lee has decided to share with the world. Wolf's intention was to create a visual interpretation of Russell's work, but after meeting some of the folks close to Russell Matt realized only a portrait of Arthur's life through his music would do him service.

Arthur Russell's music is extremely emotional: his vulnerable voice intertwining with processed cello and often with programmed beats results in a combination of ethereal sounds that enters the listener's mind and opens a direct connection to forgotten childhood emotions. Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell manages the same task with recreations of Russell's seemingly mundane routines, interviews with those closest to him, and ultimately with tear-inducing footage of his performances.

Matt Wolf took the time to discuss his film and Arthur Russell with Fecal Face just in time for the SF Film Society's screening of Wild Combination at Mezzanine as part of SFFS' ongoing SF360 Film Club. The screening is Monday, September 22nd.

Interview with Matt Wolf

Fecal Face: How did you come to discover the music of Arthur Russell and then decide to produce this portrait of him?

Matt Wolf

Matt Wolf: Well, it was actually my friend who used to live in San Francisco that recommended Arthur's music to me. He was a good friend of mine and an avid music collector, and he described this long-forgotten gay disco auteur that wore farmer-plaid shirts and would ride the Staten Island Ferry listening to various versions of songs on cassettes. That image really intrigued me, so I went and bought some of the reissue albums, Calling Out of Context and The World of Arthur Russell, and I just became obsessively involved in listening to that music--I knew it was the sort of thing I would fall in love with. I was listening really closely to that music. I come from an experimental film background and originally felt kind of inspired to produce a purely visual film that would be an interpretation of Arthur's music, and I tracked down Arthur's former boyfriend Tom Lee online. I contacted him seeking permission to use Arthur's music and explained that I intended on doing a project that was experimental in nature. Months passed and then Tom contacted me, and he said I should come over and meet him. I went to the apartment that he had once shared with Arthur that was the same building where Allen Ginsberg, Richard Hell, and many other luminaries had lived. I just had a nice chat with Tom and immediately felt inspired by him and it was clear that he still had a very intense connection to Arthur that was very much alive. At that moment it was clear to me that there could be an intense biographical dimension to a possible film project about Arthur.

Tom started introducing me to others, and I had that same impression when I spoke to Arthur's parents, Chuck and Emily, who live in Oskaloosa, Iowa in the house where Arthur was raised. All these impressions started influencing me to move in a more biographical and documentary direction and the film just started happening and unraveling.

FF: How did you make a decision to create a portrait rather than an in-depth documentary? Was it because a lack of archival footage available of Arthur?

MW: Well, I do not think that guided that decision conclusively although I definitely was working with a modest amount of actual footage of Arthur, so I knew that I would have create an unconventional visual language to bring his story in that setting and time to life. But I guess it never was my interest to make an encyclopedic or definitive biography of Arthur, and I wasn't attracted to the musical lore, the minutia of the details of Arthur's musical production, or the surrounding musical culture. I wanted to build those context in the larger film ultimately to make clear what Arthur was pursuing, but I guess some of the traps I was trying to avoid were, for instance, having an over abundance of talking heads that you were not familiar with, or to avoid having an abundance of experts analyzing or interpreting the cultural context or Arthur's music. There is one figure like that in the film, but I wanted it to be a more intimate film with the scaled-down ensemble of people who were identifiable and who represented really discreet aspects of Arthur's life. I think for all those reasons I was making a portrait; I wasn't making the definitive story or biography of Arthur.

FF: There is such a fictional quality to Arthur's life that comes through in the film - farm boy stumbles upon Allen Ginsberg and then suddenly is involved with the New York City experimental music community. Did you find all of these connections astonishing and was it difficult to balance what happened in his life against the portrait you wanted to paint?

MW: Arthur encountered and crossed paths with a tremendous range of people, all of whose stories are really interesting; like David Mancuso, who is just one figure that Arthur cross-pollinated and crossed paths with...a whole movie unto itself about the collaborations with Philip Glass and Robert Wilson, and that moment in the history of the avant-garde and its crossing over into a larger consciousness. That story is its own film and I definitely had interest in going deeper into a lot of those things, but I had to maintain a certain level of focus on central goals, particularly to create a cathartic or emotional experience by hearing Arthur's story, and then to balance the biographical with the cultural history and to balance the music with the dialogue. There was a natural push and pull between all these different kinds of narratives in the film...there are so many other narrative possibilities that go unexplored in service of the overall goal of giving an emotional encounter with Arthur's life.

FF: One thing the film brought out was the question of whether or not Arthur was truly a tormented individual in his obsession with creating music and his inability to complete it: balancing his obsessions with his perfectionist being. I am curious if, as almost through a process of osmosis, Arthur's obsessions fell onto you, and whether you had difficulty knowing when you were done creating this portrait of Arthur and his emotive music?

MW: Yes, I think this is true of other film makers that I have talked to that have made films about artists - it is impossible to not be self-reflective on your own process as compared to the artist that you're representing. In many was I was inspired by the determination of Arthur in the face of constant rejection...the rejection that had stopped him from pursuing his musical passion and his musical ambition with the same kinds of determination that he always had. [He also] was really methodically involved in an artistic process and he was able to focus on that in a very unique way, and you know, he didn't finish things but perhaps that was just an element of him just being engaged with his own process. On the flip side of that Arthur suffered from a level of paranoia that was self-defeating and he created obstacles for himself that proved to ruin certain opportunities, or that got in the way of him reaching a wider audience. I did not personally relate to the paranoia aspect of it but I felt I could empathize with the pressure to complete something and for there to be an element of finality with the film, which of course is never really truly possible. It was hard to finish the film, and it is always hard to finish something that you are creating out of nothing - in which the possibilities are really endless. And you know, I am really different from Arthur (laughs) in a lot of ways, but it helped me empathize with what he was going through. Certain people I would talk to still have a great deal of frustration they feel when remembering their relationship with Arthur.

FF: You put together an ensemble of people that obviously have an affinity for Arthur, but did you encounter people that simply felt the polar opposite?

MW: Well yes, and I think Bob Blank really touches on that a lot in the film even though I think he still feels a lot of warmth for Arthur. They had a really frustrating and adversarial relationship, and he spoke a great deal about how much tension and animosity there was between him and Arthur. And Will Socolov, his relationship with Arthur ended poorly, but I think despite that all those people felt a lot of warmth for Arthur. There was something very childlike about him; he was almost like a little kid who would annoy the shit out of you but you couldn't help but to love or admire in some way, and I would think that is true for both Will and Bob. I really focused on people that had a truly significant encounter with Arthur. I am sure plenty of people had less significant or profound working relationships or connections to him, and they might have just purely negative things to say, but I did not feel that would be a asset to the film particularly since I was already limiting the amount of people that would be talking.

FF: Many people feel that Arthur's music is timeless - that it almost is the very definition of the word timeless. Do you feel that in producing this film you came closer to understanding where he was coming from with his music by visiting Iowa, or being in his apartment, or talking with people - or does it still feel as though his music were almost handed down from on high in some way?

MW: I don't think it is ever possible or necessarily useful to identify all the sources of inspiration or all the roots of ideas that are within somebody's art...

FF: Probably impossible.

MW: Yes, impossible and not even necessary in that there should always be a level of mystery that defies language or reckoning in great artistic projects, and like that it was clear that Arthur had these preoccupations with water or the space under water, the ocean, or also in contrast to that the wide open plains of Iowa. He imbued his song-writing with a Country twang that is an emblematic Midwestern sensibility, he was responsive to the rhythms and energy of New York City's downtown, but I don't think any of those contexts or reference points explain his artwork. There is something about him that defies explanation which I think touches upon what you are talking about, which is timelessness. You can't just pin it down in a specific time or place where it doesn't just touch us in one specific way or evoke one static response or reaction, and I think that is what is great about it.

FF: Absolutely, and it seems in the film Tom Lee and Arthur's parents are genuinely enthusiastic about people having an opportunity to hear his music. Is that the general sense you got?

MF: Yeah, I think they are all ecstatic that Arthur is this cult celebrity now, which wasn't the case when he was alive. He would have a concert and nobody would come, you know, it was really disorganized and Tom would be cringing hoping that if any of his friends came they would get it. As Arthur's parents said in the movie, they didn't quite understand his music when he was alive - but I think all the discourse surrounding it, and all the critical praise and acclaim, has really been exciting and exhilarating for them because they all share so much pride in Arthur, and so many happy memories of him.

FF: Why did you choose the song title "Wild Combination" for the title of the film?

MF: "Wild Combination" was the song that Arthur had hoped would become a hit, and I think that song is really universally acceptable. I also thought the metaphor of "Wild Combination" was potent in that it really helped explain Arthur's music, particularly the desperate interest in disco and the avant-garde that people for some reason could never reconcile as a logical stepping stone from one to the other. And I think that Arthur had a great challenge at juxtaposing seemingly unrelated elements and synthesizing them into something whole, and that to me is representative of the title of this song "Wild Combination."

FF: Well that is pretty much all I have.

MW: Well thanks so much.

FF: I sincerely appreciate you time and I want to thank you for the film. I think it is funny that Arthur's music could become popular because it is the type of thing that you want to hide in your pocket and cherish...

MW: Yeah, totally....

FF: It seems like the sort of music that each individual listener will have his or her own connection to, and will be able to do so in the context of a mass secret...but anyway, I want to thank you for making this documentary.

MW: Oh, thank you. It is great to hear that kind of feedback. Thank you.

FF: Thank you.

SF Film Society's screening of Wild Combination at Mezzanine as part of SFFS' ongoing SF360 Film Club. The screening is Monday, September 22nd.

We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...

If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.

Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.

Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.

Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.

Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.

San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.

Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.

Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.

The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.

With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding

I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle

Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.

Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.

For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.

I don't think at this point it needs to be written since the last update to Fecal Face was a long time ago, but...

I, John Trippe, have put this baby Fecal Face to bed. I'm now focusing my efforts on running ECommerce at DLX which I'm very excited about... I guess you can't take skateboarding out of a skateboarder.

It was a great 15 years, and most of that effort can still be found within the site. Click around. There's a lot of content to explore.

I'm not sure how many people are lucky enough to have The San Francisco Giants 3 World Series trophies put on display at their work for the company's employees to enjoy during their lunch break, but that's what happened the other day at Deluxe. So great.

When works of art become commodities and nothing else, when every endeavor becomes “creative” and everybody “a creative,” then art sinks back to craft and artists back to artisans—a word that, in its adjectival form, at least, is newly popular again. Artisanal pickles, artisanal poems: what’s the difference, after all? So “art” itself may disappear: art as Art, that old high thing. Which—unless, like me, you think we need a vessel for our inner life—is nothing much to mourn.

Hard-working artisan, solitary genius, credentialed professional—the image of the artist has changed radically over the centuries. What if the latest model to emerge means the end of art as we have known it? --continue reading

"[Satire] is important because it brings out the flaws we all have and throws them up on the screen of another person," said Turner. “How they react sort of shows how important that really is.” Later, he added, "Charlie took a hit for everybody." -read on

NYC --- A new graffiti abatement program put forth by the police commissioner has beat cops carrying cans of spray paint to fill in and cover graffiti artists work in an effort to clean up the city --> Many cops are thinking it's a waste of resources, but we're waiting to see someone make a project of it. Maybe instructions for the cops on where to fill-in?

The NYPD is arming its cops with cans of spray paint and giving them art-class-style lessons to tackle the scourge of urban graffiti, The Post has learned.

Shootings are on the rise across the city, but the directive from Police Headquarters is to hunt down street art and cover it with black, red and white spray paint, sources said... READ ON

We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...

If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.

Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.

Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.

Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.

Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.

San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.

Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.

Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.

The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.

With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding

I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle

Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.

Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.

For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.

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